Reply #150: You haven't watch al-Manar, I can tell [View All]

[MADem]

And you clearly, based on your assertions above, don't know our laws. And you have no problem with making things up to 'prove' your case.

Because you wouldn't have a problem with what I say, or disbelieve me, if you watched the station, read the law, and researched Hizb'Allah's funding stream. Hell, even Walid Phares, who is Lebanese born and raised, was on television this morning saying essentially the same damn things I have been saying.

As I have said elsewhere, would you have a problem with a television station that, every fifteen minutes, showed a music video of skinheads beating up gays, killing them, and poking their bodies to the strains of cheery music exhorting youngsters to do the same? And equally frequently, videos of handsome teenagers giving testimonial to rousing music about the joy they will feel when they maim and kill homosexuals??

You need to answer that question. Is that "freedom of speech?" Or is that "hate speech?" You cannot have it both ways. We ARE a nation of laws. All you have to do is substitute JEW for HOMOSEXUAL in the example I proffered above, and you have al-Manar. And THAT is the reason the US banned the station, two years ago. Not because the government is being "mean" to the poor little mullah with the automatic weapon. Not because "the Jews" exert some sort of dire influence over the US Department of the Treasury.

Lastly, you don't understand the organizational structure of Hizb'Allah. AT ALL. If you did, your last paragraph would not have made it into your diatribe. It is a three headed hydra, of charitable, political, and militia. The charitable element NEVER TOUCHES the political or the military elements (save to launder money, and that's only in an emergency) for purposes of plausible deniability. And where you got your Ivory Soap 99 Percent Charitable amount, I've no idea. The charitable wing of the party fosters loyalty, provides cover, and adds incentive to recruitment efforts. And it is largely funded by IRAN. But it is nowhere close to the majority of the Hizb'Allah budget, and anyone who knows even a tiny bit about them knows that to be a fact. Do a little research before you toss out made-up figures, please.

The political and the militia wings, with their 'public affairs' arm of al-Manar, serve to gain power by whatever means necessary, to include recruiting extremists and disaffected youth to blow themselves up for their cause. Those commercials that air constantly are a big part of their strategy.

Read the history of Arafat's PLO for an understanding of how these organizations work, or the Muslim Bretheren in Egypt. They prey on the hopeless. They aren't heroic, they're bastards who use and abuse the least of their very own bretheren. If the Nasrallahs of the outfit, even the 40 year old and up foot soldiers, would strap on a vest and go do a deed, I'd have more respect for them. Instead, they send children. Pimple-faced teens. A suicide bomber can blow himself up for the cause and ensure that his mother has a pension for life, courtesy of that "charitable" wing--that's some incentive when there's no work and no prospects, and perhaps a dozen mouths that need feeding in the household. And it happens with alarming frequency.